How To Master Facebook Advertising For Small Businesses in Jacksonville

With proper planning and expert strategy, Facebook Advertising is one of the most effective tools for a serious return on your advertising investment. Facebook’s platform features advanced targeting options and a vast user base, making it ideal for connecting with potential customers in your local area and beyond. 

With so many benefits, jumping right in and getting started can be tempting, but it’s not quite that easy. There are many intricacies to building an effective Facebook campaign. Misunderstanding a feature or misapplying a button can lead you to spend all your advertising money and see no return.

No worries! Our expert strategists are here to break down the facets of a robust Facebook ad campaign so you can meet those business goals and grow your business. We’ll even walk you through creating a campaign at the end.

First, we need to cover some basics.

Or, if you'd like, you can feel free to skip ahead to an example campaign.

1. Understand the Basics of Facebook Advertising

Create a Business Page

Before you can start advertising on Facebook, you need a business page. This page serves as your business’s presence on Facebook, where you can post updates, engage with customers, and run ads. 

Set Up an Ads Account

Facebook Ads Manager is the platform’s tool for creating and managing ads. It allows you to design ads, set budgets, choose targeting options, and track performance. Setup is easy: simply follow the link and sign in with your business account!

Know Your Objective

Facebook offers various advertising objectives, such as brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, and conversions. Choose the objective that most aligns with your business goals. 

Let’s talk about some of those objectives and give an example use case for each one:

Brand Awareness: This objective is designed to grow your brand within your target audience. If you are a new company in a space or an established company and feel like your market share is slipping, a brand awareness objective may be right for you.

Reach: If your primary focus is getting your ad in front of as many people in your target market as possible, a reach campaign is the way to go. An effective use for this objective may be an event or a one-time sale.

Traffic: A traffic campaign is designed to drive users to your website, a landing page, or an app. You might use this objective if you are an E-commerce store looking to boost sales.

Engagement: If your objective is to grow your social media presence, you could use the engagement objective to encourage interactions with the ad, including likes, comments, and event responses. This type of campaign is effective for setting the stage for a new product launch or an upcoming event.

App installs: As the name suggests, this objective boosts app downloads by sending users directly to the app store. You would use this objective to promote a new game or other application or an improvement to an existing app that may stimulate renewed interest.

Video Views: This type of objective promotes video content to increase the number of views and engagement with the video. This approach can be powerful for maximizing the reach of a new, slick video that perfectly showcases your product’s features.

Lead Generation: If your sales team is hungry for new contacts, you can use the lead generation objective to collect customer information in one click within Facebook. A home improvement company could use this objective to find interested customers and create personalized offers.

Conversions: This objective encourages specific actions on your website, such as a purchase or a newsletter sign-up. For example, this type of campaign could be effective for an online subscription service offering a free trial to convert them into paying customers in the future. 

These are just a few use cases. It is possible, even likely, that running multiple campaigns with multiple objectives would make sense to grow your business.

If you’re unsure what would be most effective for your company, a local digital marketing agency can help you discover the best short-term and long-term objectives for your business and break down each step to get there.

2. Defining Target Audiences

Use Facebook’s Targeting and Retargeting Options

Facebook’s advanced targeting options allow you to reach specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and location. For a small business in Jacksonville, you might target users who live in or frequently visit the Jacksonville area. There are several criteria you can select when building your campaign.

Retargeting is even more effective. This approach involves showing ads to people who have previously engaged with your business. Using Facebook’s retargeting options, you can remind potential customers about your products or services, encouraging them to complete a purchase or take another desired action. Retargeting can be set up based on specific interactions, such as viewing a particular product page or adding items to a shopping cart without completing the purchase.

To effectively retarget, you must have enough data to give to Facebook. Installing a Facebook pixel on your website to track visitors and those who’ve engaged with your brand is the most effective method for acquiring this data. If your business is active on your Facebook or Instagram page, data is also collected there. 

Here's how to get a pixel if you don’t have one installed already.

Ideally, you will have at least several months of data from your pixel to get the most effective results. If your business doesn’t have a pixel installed yet and you want to run ads right now, a lookalike audience is an effective option.

Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences are perfect if you don’t have a pixel or your pixel hasn’t been running very long. Lookalike audiences are derived from the information you do have. For example, you could upload the emails of all your current customers or an email subscriber list.  Facebook will review the data you provided to create a custom audience comprised of users similar to your existing customers. 

This helps you expand your reach to people likely to be interested in your business. By creating Lookalike Audiences from your Custom Audiences, you can find new potential customers who share characteristics with your most valuable audience segments.

3. Design Ad Creative Strategically

Use Eye-Catching Visuals

You can optimize your ad objectives and budget, but if your ad creative is weak, you won’t enjoy the number of conversions you would expect. Use high-quality images or videos that are relevant to your business and visually appealing. Ensure your assets are consistent with your brand identity.

Write Compelling Copy

Your ad copy should be clear, concise, and compelling. Highlight the benefits of your product or service and include strong messaging that aligns with your overall brand voice.

When crafting ad copy for Facebook ads, it's essential to remember a few key principles to ensure your message is effective and engaging.

Character Limits and Conciseness: Facebook ads have specific character limits: 125 characters for the primary text, 40 characters for the headline, and 30 characters for the description. Adhering to these limits requires clear, concise language. Focus on the core message and eliminate any unnecessary words.

Here’s an example:

Primary Text: "Discover luxury skincare at half the price. Limited time offer!"

Headline: "50% Off Premium Skincare."

Description: "Shop now for exclusive deals on top brands."

Frontloading Important Information: Frontload your ad copy with the most important information to ensure key messages are visible even if the text is truncated. Start with a strong hook highlighting your product or service's primary benefit or unique selling point, such as "Save 50% on premium skincare" or "Get instant access to exclusive content."

Here’s an example:

"Save 50% on premium skincare products today! Limited time offer."

Test Different Formats

Facebook offers various ad formats, including single image, carousel, video, slideshow, and collection ads. Experiment with different formats to see which ones resonate best with your audience.

4. Set a Budget and Schedule

Determine Your Budget

Facebook allows you to set a daily or lifetime budget for your ads. Be aware that more money doesn’t necessarily mean more results, especially in the beginning.

Each time an ad is shown, the delivery system learns more about the best people and places to show it. For this reason, Facebook ads should be rolled out in phases. The first phase lasts roughly 7-30 days and is considered to be a learning phase. 

This is a time when Facebook’s algorithm is testing engagement of your ads with various audiences and machine learning how to provide you with the best results. We recommend setting a minimum budget of $50 per day during the learning phase. You need enough budget to let Facebook learn, but too much spend during this period can drain your overall budget if you’re not getting the results you’re looking for.

Once you have evaluated performance in the learning phase, your next step is an amplify phase. During this timeframe, roughly another 30 days, you should have more confidence in the effectiveness of your ads and justify additional spending. Our team usually recommends ramping up your spend to at least $100 per day if you’re starting at $50 in the learning period during the amplify phase. 

After the amplify phase, you will have all the data you need to calculate customer acquisition cost (CAC) and return on investment (ROI). At this point, you can make an informed decision about a practical and logical budget moving forward.

The delivery system is very effective at learning, but be sure to allow it appropriate time to help your business. Being strategic and regularly working with the data is the secret to achieving desired results.

Ad Scheduling

Facebook gives you control over the days and times you would like to run your ads and whether or not to run them continuously or with a specific start and end date. 

While your audience’s behavior data is valuable, our expert recommendation is to allow Facebook to choose the days and times during the learning phase. This ensures that your ads reach your customers when they are most active. You may find that you get conversions on days you would not have expected. For instance, your target audience might be most engaged during evenings, and Facebook's algorithm can help optimize these opportunities.

5. Monitor and Optimize Your Campaigns

Track Performance Metrics

Facebook Ads Manager provides detailed insights into your ad performance. Key metrics to monitor include reach, impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and conversions. Analyzing these metrics can help you understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

Adjust and Optimize

Based on your performance metrics, A/B test your ads and employ powerful retargeting techniques. Although it may be tempting to start adjusting things immediately, our team strongly advises patience, at least until the learning phase is complete. 

Changes might involve minor tweaks to your ad copy, new visuals, refining your targeting, or adjusting your budget. Optimizing your ads following the recommended period will help you achieve better results over time.

6. Utilize Local Awareness Ads

Promote Local Business

Local awareness ads are designed to help you reach people near your business location. These ads can include a call-to-action button that provides directions, encourages people to call your business, or prompts them to visit your website.

Highlight Local Events

If your business is hosting or participating in local events in Jacksonville, use Facebook ads to promote them. This can increase attendance and build awareness of your business in the local community.

7. Engage with Your Audience

Respond to Comments and Messages

Engagement is key to building a strong relationship with your audience. Respond to comments on your ads and messages promptly. If you can’t handle all of the engagement alone, it may be a sign that you need to bring on additional help. Fret not – your business is growing and deserves the extra care and attention that more hands on deck offers! Taking the time to really amp up professional engagement shows that you value customer interaction and are attentive to their needs.

Encourage Reviews and Testimonials

Positive reviews and testimonials can enhance your business’s credibility. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on your Facebook page, and highlight these testimonials in your ads to build trust with potential customers.

8. Learn from Competitors

Analyze Competitor Ads

Keep an eye on your competitors' Facebook activity. Analyze their ad strategies, visuals, and copy to identify what works well. Use these insights to improve your ads and stay ahead in the competitive landscape.

Use Facebook’s Ad Library For Competitor Research

Facebook’s Ad Library allows you to see all active ads any business on the platform is running. This can provide valuable insights into your competitors’ strategies and help you develop more effective ads.

The Ad Library is one of the most powerful tools available to you. You can use it to look at ads within your industry for ideas and inspiration before launching your campaign. It can also validate your ideas and help you optimize and scale your upcoming campaigns.

9. Example Ad Campaign

Now that we’ve given you the rundown on Facebook ads let’s walk through an example campaign for a plumbing company, First Choice Plumbing Solutions,  in Jacksonville, Fla. This company wants to drive sales within its local area for emergency plumbing services. First Choice has its Facebook pixel installed, and it has been gathering data for 180 days.

Here is how we would set this up:

Campaign Level:

• Buying Type: You have the option of choosing Reservation or Auction buying. Since this company’s goal is conversions, not brand awareness, and they don’t have specific costs they need to lock in, we will go with the Auction buying type.

• Campaign Objective: Customers can’t make purchases on First Choice’s website, so our objective is to get them to call or fill out the form on their website to be contacted about a service.

• Campaign Spending Limit: We are monitoring First Choice’s budget on a third-party app, so we don’t need to worry about setting a spending limit. If you want to be sure you’re not spending more than you want in a particular period, set a limit.

• Advantage Campaign Budget: We want to give Facebook as much control over our budget as possible, so we turn this on. We set our $50/day budget and let Facebook determine which ads deserve the budget.

• Bid Strategy: The highest volume automated bidding approach aims to achieve the most outcomes (conversions) possible with the set budget. 

Ad Set Level:

• Conversion Location: Since we want the conversion event to be website form submissions, we will select “website.” 

• Performance Goal: “Maximize number of conversions” allows us to optimize ad delivery to encourage form submissions, ensuring a high return on investment and efficient use of the ad budget by targeting users most likely to complete and submit the form.

• Pixel: First Choice has had their FB pixel installed on their site for about six months, tracking form submission conversions. We tested the events in the Events Manager, and everything is firing properly. 

• Conversion Event: The Lead event tracks when a user shows interest by providing contact information (e.g., filling out a form).

• Cost Per Result Goal: We don’t have a specific cost per result in mind yet, so we aren’t using this feature.

• Dynamic Creative: We are turning this on because we plan to give Facebook all of the images, headlines, primary texts, etc., that it needs and want Facebook to test the combinations and show the winning combos to our target audience. Again, giving Facebook control here is beneficial. 

Important note: Your primary text and copy must be coherent when combined to ensure the ad makes sense and is effective. 

Example of a bad combination for plumbing services:

• Primary Text: "Our expert plumbers are ready to tackle any emergency 24/7."
• Headline: "Book your routine maintenance appointment today."

If you want more control, turn this feature off.

• Schedule: If you have an end date, record it here to prevent overspending. For this company, we are running a 90-day campaign. 

• Ad Spending Limits: You can also add spending limits at the ad set level if you’re concerned about over spending.

• Location Targeting: This plumbing company only provides service within 25 miles of Jacksonville, FL, so we set our radius here. If you have any exclusions, you can also include them here. For example, you may want to use this radius but wish to exclude Georgia. 

• Minimum Age: This is the default, and that works with this company. However, If you want to be more specific with demographic targeting, you can do that here. For example, maybe your business offers senior housing; you’d add the 65+ minimum age. 

• Exclusions: We don’t have any exclusions for this case. You might use this feature to avoid showing ads to people who have already converted or engaged in specific ways, ensuring your ads reach only new potential customers. For example, this company could exclude audiences who filled out the contact form or scheduled service in the past 30 days. This prevents wasting ad spend on users who have already taken the desired action.

• Advantage+ Audience: This feature leverages Facebook's advanced machine learning algorithms to automatically create and optimize audiences based on your goals. We want it turned on for this campaign to allow Facebook more control over our targeting. We can give Facebook some parameter suggestions to work with if we want. For example, someone who is interested in home improvement. 

• Custom Audiences: First Choice is active on their Instagram and Facebook pages, so we created a custom audience based on individuals who have engaged with those profiles over the last 365 days. This company has had the Facebook pixel installed on their site for over a year, so we could also create a lookalike audience, or list of individuals who have visited their site within the last 180 days. 

• Detailed Targeting: We aren’t targeting any further than we already have. For most businesses, It pays to start broad on Facebook. Over-targeting on Facebook Ads can lead to several downsides, including a significantly reduced audience size, which limits reach and increases ad frequency, potentially causing ad fatigue prematurely.

• Advantage+ Placements: Again, here we are giving Facebook the most control. Based on our inputs, we want the platform to decide where our budget is best allocated (reels, feed, etc.).

• Brand Safety: If you have any content exclusions you can enter them here. For example, maybe this plumbing company doesn't want to show its ads alongside another plumbing company.

Ad Level:

Identity: Add your social pages here if you have them.

Ad Setup: This company doesn’t have a Meta catalog, so we are uploading our own imagery. We will upload single-image graphics/images and one video. We recommend testing different creative with your audience. Once you monitor performance, you can turn off video, for example, if it's not performing well, and let Facebook reallocate your budget to another creative.

• Ad Copy: Enter your Primary Text, Headline, and Descriptions here. Make sure to frontload the important information. You should test long and short-form primary text copy. Use Facebook’s AI text generation feature if you get stuck on copy.

• URL: Use Facebook’s URL parameter builder to build a URL you can track in Google Analytics. The more specific you can get, the better. You want the ability to track and attribute where your website leads come from easily.

Mastering Facebook advertising can significantly boost your small business in Jacksonville. You can effectively reach potential customers and drive growth by understanding the platform’s tools, defining your target audience, creating compelling ads, and continuously optimizing your campaigns. 

For additional help connecting with your local community and taking your business to new heights, reach out to Fable Heart Media We put a lot of ❤️ into Jacksonville’s small businesses because we love our city and want to see it grow! Let’s get started today on making your doorstep or landing page the place all the locals want to check out next.

For more expert advice on running Facebook ads, visit our blog page.